80 proof
by kelly.rockwell
Summary: Chris/Lydia. Chris is drunk and Lydia is really quick with the snatching of the keys.


Chris stays until the bar closes.

He doesn't think he has a problem. It's not like he's hiding bottles around the apartment; not like he's drinking before noon or stumbling around in a constant stupor.

It's just sometimes he likes to have a few drinks, and maybe he does it in public so that he's accountable for how much he has. Or maybe he just doesn't like to drink alone.

He's leaving the bar, stepping out into the cold night air and squinting at the bright streetlights like they've personally offended him.

He turns to head towards his truck and smacks right into someone, takes a hit of strawberry blonde hair to the face.

"Mr. Argent?" Lydia is saying, she's got a hand on his upper arm and she's looking at him with wide-eyed concern.

Chris straightens his spine and lifts his chin, tries to look authoritative and not half-plastered in front of his daughter's best friend. "Lydia," he says with a smile that feels kind of strange on his face. "You're out late."

Lydia holds up a small bag from the drugstore a few storefronts down from the bar as an answer. "Retail therapy."

"Ahhh," he says, and he feels like maybe he drags the sound out a little longer than he might've meant to. He fishes in his pocket for his keys, extracts them and then promptly drops them on the ground. "Well fuck, who buttered my keys?"

Lydia's staring at him with parted lips and even wider eyes than before when he comes back up from scooping his damn keys up off the cement.

"Are you alright?" she asks him.

Chris nods. "Hundred percent, babe."

He can't place what's wrong with that sentence, but he feels like it's something.

Lydia scoffs. "Yeah, well, you smell one hundred _proof._"

Chris is chuckling at her joke, fingering his keys for the right one. He blinks blearily down at them, and she yanks them away from him in a flash.

"I don't think so. I'm taking you home," Lydia tells him, and her tone is so firm that he can hardly believe it.

He tells her as much.

"I do not need you to drive me home, Lydia, I'm fine," he says. He furrows his brow and nods his head for emphasis, but it's too sudden of a movement and he feels a little dizzy and stumbles.

"Oh yeah," Lydia says, linking his arm in hers as she starts to tug him along. "You're perfect."

And he'd be embarrassed if everything wasn't so blurry.

She loads him into the passenger seat and then gets behind the wheel; refuses to drive until he's buckled his seat belt. He feels like a child. This child is treating him like he's a child. And that's sad, that's really fucking sad.

So he laughs.

Lydia escorts him up the stairs to his apartment and when they're outside his door she gives him his keys back, but she eyes him first like she's not even sure he's capable of using them to unlock a deadbolt.

And he shouldn't, God, he shouldn't, but he finds himself missing the lock intentionally on the first try. The key skids against the door frame and that's all it takes; her hand is covering his, guiding the key into the lock. Her skin is so soft, he notices absently, and so pale against his own.

The door pushes open and she's ushering him inside, lingering inside the doorway, watching him.

"I trust you can find your own way to bed," she says, and there's that tone again. She's so above him right now, he thinks. Oh, but maybe she always is.

No, no, that's not right. That's not a good line of thinking to go down, drunk or not. But he does it anyway.

"Maybe," he says, letting his eyes drag over her, "you should help me find it."

Lydia blinks at him, and for a moment he thinks he really stepped in it. It was only a joke, probably, and who could really blame him for making it?

The state of California, he thinks, and sighs.

But then she steps in, lets the door click shut behind her and drops her bags on the table.

"Come on," she says softly, and then she's wrapping an arm around his back and guiding him down the hallway.

He's not sure if she pushes him into his bed or if he falls, but his back connects hard with the mattress and he lets out an undignified grunt.

"Okay," she's saying from somewhere over to the side of the bed. "Well, you're home and in bed. My work here is done."

And that should be it. He should let her leave at that.

Instead of doing that, he jolts up and he reaches out for her, curls his fingers around her wrist.

"Thanks," he says. That's all he can think of.

"Don't mention it," she says, smiling sweetly down at him.

God, he wishes she hadn't.

Chris swallows hard. "Gorgeous," he mutters, and for a second he's not sure if it actually came out of his mouth or if he just thought it really loud.

But then her eyes are going wide again, and he's really sick of himself for making her look at him like that so many times in one night.

"Sorry," he says, shakes his head and lowers his gaze. "Didn't mean to."

There's nothing for a drawn out few seconds, and he thinks maybe he's an idiot and he managed to break Allison's best friend with one slurred word but then her fingers are under his chin, nudging until he's meeting her gaze.

She leans in slowly, so slow that he's almost not sure she's really even moving. Thinks maybe he's making it up.

Her lips are so full and soft on his when they connect, though, and he knows that's real.

It's a fleeting thing. He barely has time to move his lips against hers before she's pulling away again, and then she's gone.

Out his bedroom door in a soft red blur.

He tries to chase her, maybe to apologize but probably to try to get one more kiss. But the room spins when he gets to his feet and he's back down, flat on his back and clinging to the mattress as the room shifts in circles around him.

Chris wakes in the morning to a throbbing headache and a nagging sense that something very wrong happened last night. It comes back to him in flashes, but it seems so ridiculous that he thinks it was probably just a dream. An inappropriate one, at that.

But then he tilts his head and sees a glass of water and a couple of aspirin sitting on his nightstand. There's a note pinned down by the glass and he reaches out, snatches it up and blinks at it. Reads it ten times before he believes it.

_'Thought you'd need something in the morning. Your keys are in the bowl by the door. And you only tasted 80 proof. -Lydia'_


End file.
